A Few Daffodils From The Curate's Garden

Remember the famous 'one woman in four a victim of domestic violence' stat, oft-quoted but never sourced ?

Apparently in the States one female student in four is a victim of rape.




Famous children's author Jacqueline Wilson (Laban's take is here) takes liberal hypocrisy into hyperspace.

Children's author Dame Jacqueline Wilson has expressed concern that youngsters are growing up too quickly. "I think children act like adults at an alarmingly early age," said the Tracy Beaker creator.

And Ms Wilson's contribution to this happy situation ?


"Nearly all the children in my books want to wear make-up and dye their hair and pierce their ears. Most of my fictional teenagers want to stay out as late as possible and drink alcohol".

I'm reading a Victorian teenager's book at the moment - the 1835 edition of Mary Martha Sherwood's "The History of Susan Gray". Just a slight contrast.

What's also remarkable about the children's fiction of the past is the standard of English a child's expected to read at. As a bored seven-year old I can remember struggling with my uncle's childhood copy of R.M. Ballantyne's 'The Coral Island', with its fascinating (to a seven year old) descriptions of cannibalism. Looking at it the other day I was astonished at how dense the text was, how convoluted the sentences. Many teenagers would find it hard going now. Yet it was written for children and was highly successful.




The "National" health service continues to get less national - though perhaps more nationalist - by the day.

Patients, staff and visitors will be able to park for free at almost every NHS hospital in Wales by the end of 2011.



And while I don't agree with everything in the post, there's a truth here which applies on both sides of the Atlantic :

The last Depression we endured took place in a country with enviable natural resources, a large and growing industrial capacity, and blessed with a population familiar with discipline, thrift, and the deferral of gratification. The next depression, Kunstler predicts, “will play out against the background of a society that has p****d away its oil endowment, bulldozed its factories, arbitraged its productive labor, destroyed both family farms and the commercial infrastructure of main street, and trained its population to become overfed diabetic TV zombie `consumers’ of other peoples’ productivity, paid for by `money’ they haven’t earned.”


The ongoing California unpleasantness between black and Latino (see this post) is in City Journal - in other words the realities are close to becoming known in the mainstream, rather than solely being the subject of bloggers like Face Right.

"The Rainbow Coalition Evaporates"